These Broken Wings Can't Learn to Heal
by SplatDragon
Summary: Wing!fic: Arthur had taken pains to hide his wings from his pa's as best he could after that; he never wanted to see that look on his face again—on either of their faces. But he couldn't help but to punish himself, stare into the mirror and unveil his wings, remind himself of how he had failed to protect every last one of those scars.


**Whumptober 2019, #15: "Scars"**

Micah had tried to get him to show him his wings, more than once.

'_We're both Sons of Dutch, and that makes us brothers.'_

People tended to show their wings to family. After all, who else could you bear your literal soul to?

He wasn't entirely sure what Micah's endgame was, but he knew it wasn't anything good. The man had even flashed his own at him, once or twice, 'accidentally' letting him get a glimpse of his Lammergeier wings. And even those few second glimpses were enough to set unease deep in his stomach.

You never killed someone without it leaving a mark deep on your soul. Never lost someone without it showing on your wings. It was just a part of their lifestyle, a part of being an outlaw.

Yet Micah's wings were flawless. Black and cream feathers were unmarred, as smooth and unharmed as a young child's. He had seen, perhaps, a dull patch near the joint, where the feathers had fallen out and failed to grow back right, but it could just has easily been a trick of the light.

Arthur couldn't remember the last time he had shown someone his wings.

His mother used to coo over them, he remembered, over their rich brown color. But then she'd died, and a great wound had torn his right wing from tip to scapula, and the color had dulled. And his pa had taken to snarling at him, telling him he had no right to still be bleeding, and he'd taken to hiding his wings.

He'd joined up with Dutch and Hosea, and they walked around with their wings out. Some part of him knew it was an attempt to put him at ease, to show they trusted him, and to some extent it worked. It took years before he felt comfortable to unfold his own wings, let them ripple into visibility—and it was the first time he had seen them since he was a child.

He'd been groggy, blinking blearily into the campfire. Funny enough, it had been a lazy day. Their camp was set next to a lake, and they'd spent it fishing. He had no adrenaline in his veins to keep him wide awake, to keep him from sleeping, and his stomach was full with Hosea's catch.

It had been a sharp inhale, an intake through clenched teeth, that had drawn his attention. He'd looked up to see Hosea looking pointedly at Dutch, barely able to make out a hissed '_stop staring'_, realizing that Dutch wasn't staring at _him_, but something behind him.

Behind him.

His wings.

His _wings?!_

He stiffened, looking between Hosea, who had averted his gaze, and Dutch, who was trying to look away but kept darting his eyes back. They had their wings out—Dutch, with his patchwork, too small Magpie wings, and Hosea, with his too big, tufted Albatross wings. Both of them showed the scars of their past, yet they had allowed him to see their souls since the moment they took him in.

So, clenching his fists in his thread-bare jeans, he turned to look at them.

They weren't as dull as they'd been. Weren't almost black, and far less greasy. And his wound… his wound had stopped bleeding. The feathers around it weren't even stained with blood, it had healed, scarred over to nothing more than a thin white line, bare of feathers. It was hard to believe that, last he saw, it had been the span of his hand.

He didn't take to walking around with his wings out. Would let them show when he was comfortable, or drunk, or drowsy, but not for no reason at all.

As their gang grew, he showed his wings less and less. He showed them to Bessie, and Annabelle, once or twice, before they died, and it was inevitable that Susan and John saw them. But Javier, Bill, Lenny and the others, they didn't even know what type of wings he had.

He knew that Javier's wings were those of a robin, and Bill's those of a rhea. Knew that Sean's were a blue jay, Uncle a seagull, the O'Driscoll ("I'm not an O'Driscoll!") a ruby crowned kinglet, and Marston was a red-tailed hawk. But none of them knew that he had the wings of a golden eagle.

As members came and went, they left marks on his wings. Samuel and Melissa Jones—a clump of feathers torn out of his left wing as he buried them—Robert McKinnley: a bend at the tip of his wing when he saw him at the head of the group of lawmen charging into their camp. Young Jackson Hewitt, a thumb size gash in his right wing as he wasn't fast enough to shoot the noose.

Eliza and Isaac, a break in his right wing so severe it left the tip dragging along the ground.

And then Mac, crumpled feathers, and Davey, a small gash in the center of those. Jenny, ruffled feathers along his alula, and Sean, when he thought the boy was dead, bent secondary primaries on his right wing. And then, as Sean folded to the ground, still grinning, those secondary primaries tore free of his wing, leaving a wide, bleeding wound.

He showed his wings to Hosea one time, went hunting with him in search of a giant bear. Dozed off next to the campfire, half drunk on beer, relaxed for the first time in ages, just he and his pa like it had been years ago.

But he'd been woken up by a choked gasp, reaching for his gun, thinking someone was hurt. It was just Hosea, though, he'd realized quickly, his eyes wide and pained, hand over his mouth. "Hosea-?" he'd started to ask, before catching movement out of the corner of his eye.

His wings were out, and Hosea's eyes were locked on them, beginning to glass over.

He'd hidden them, and they hadn't spoken of it again.

Arthur had taken pains to hide his wings from his pa's as best he could after that; he never wanted to see that look on his face again—on either of their faces.

But he couldn't help but to punish himself, stare into the mirror and unveil his wings, remind himself of how he had failed to protect every last one of those scars.

And then Kieran had died. Well, he'd discovered that the man had died. At the time, he had been a little preoccupied, first with fighting off the wave of O'Driscolls, and then with sending the man off to be buried. It hadn't been until he'd been washing himself off, stopping to look himself over in the mirror, that he'd seen a decent sized bald patch on his left wing.

Huh.

He hadn't realized that he'd cared about Kieran that much, had expected nothing more than some ruffled feathers. Yet the wound ached, and itched, and there was nothing he could do but wait for it to heal.

Hosea died, then. He'd never felt such pain, as his wing crumpled, hollow bones shattering, giving way as though someone had taken his wing in their hand and squeezed it as tightly as they could. And he had seen Javier cower, clearly in pain as well, Dutch's face blanching in that way it did when he was trying to hide his pain. But they hadn't been able to suffer their pains, too busy trying to escape, and then Lenny died and that pain, too, the awful tearing as a strip of primaries was yanked out of his wing, blurred in with Hosea's.

Things began to grow tense, and people turned on each other. Bill became more aggressive, Javier began to snap at him. And Dutch… his only remaining pa… began to distrust him, too. Was beginning to slip, had murdered an old lady in cold blood back in Guarma. His wings began to dull, again, so dark he could mistake them for black tinted brown. And the sicker he got, the duller they became, and the tearing pain from Hosea became a jagged throb that never quite went away.

He never much liked Miss O'Shea, but he'd grown to trust her. So when she claimed to have betrayed her, a fistful of his marginal coverts bent. And when Susan shot her, they crumpled, grasped in an invisible fist.

"_Dutch… I need help!"_

Yet Dutch had walked away, and his wing had exploded into pain. If he hadn't known it was impossible, he would have thought that one of the soldiers had stomped on it, had shattered his wing into so many tiny little pieces that he'd never be able to put them all back together.

Eagle Flies saved him, at the cost of his own life. The boy died, and a scrape tore at his scapulars; his heart, his wings, ached for poor Rain Falls as he heard the man cry out his pain, could only imagine the agony in his wings, the scar that had been left on his soul after the loss of his wife and both sons. The break in his wing from Eliza and Isaac, his girl and his son, ten years later still ached; he couldn't imagine the pain that Rain Falls was in.

And then he thought John died, and he couldn't breathe through the pain. He'd watched John get shot, watched him fall off the train and out of sight. His wing had itched, begun to ache more in his primaries, as though preparing to break, although he'd told himself '_He's okay, he's okay, he's fine. He'll come riding up on Old Boy and laugh at you for fussin'.'_ But Dutch had rode up, saying that there was nothing he could have done, and his wings had exploded, he could feel his crooked wing, ruined from Eliza and Isaac and Dutch but not from Hosea, tear open, a wound that spanned the entirety of the inside of his wing, splattering blood on the ground that no one could see.

Dutch shattered the last shreds of hope he had in him, dismissed Abigail as 'just a girl' and abandoned little Jack to be an orphan, and the pain was dull, and weak, little more than a small ache that didn't come close to standing up to the one in his chest, in his throat, as some of his secondaries came loose—some part of him, some morbid, self-hating part of him, wanting to look at himself in the mirror, see how crumpled his wings were, how bald, how much blood they splattered on the ground, how much of them dragged as he walked. But he was sending Tilly and Jack off to wait for the boy's mother, and he and Sadie were riding off to save Abigail.

John was _alive_, and his wings didn't hurt so much. He could feel the wound seal up, flesh knitting together, feathers regrowing exactly as they'd been before, bald where they'd been bald, scarred and crumpled and ruffled and dull, but feathered all the same.

When Dutch pulled a gun on them, sided with Micah, it shouldn't have hurt. His pa's betrayal had been a long time coming, and some part of him had known that, no matter what he said, Dutch would still stand by Micah. He had never been good at admitting that he'd been wrong, and he'd been _so wrong_, the consequences had been _so bad_, there was no way he'd take the fall. Never admit that Mac and Davey, Jenny and Sean and Lenny, Kieran and Molly and Susan (oh, god, that had hurt, he'd known her since he was young and his wing had torn open), and poor, _poor_ Hosea had all died because he'd thrown his lot in with the wrong person.

Even still, a wound had torn into his wing, a gash the length of his palm that burned like nothing else, and left him panting for breath as he fled with John, barely feeling the bald patches form as Javier and Bill sided with Micah, as well. It was expected, but they'd been brothers, once, and it still hurt.

He was dying, and Dutch did nothing. Was staring at him, no, staring beside him, eyes glistening.

Arthur looked at his side, and couldn't help but to laugh. He couldn't feel his body anymore, everything tingled, only the pain in his soul, in his wings, telling him that he wasn't yet dead. He didn't know when he'd lost control of his wings, but they had rippled into existence at some point, stretched out on the stone beneath him.

They were a truly ghastly sight, and some part of him mourned that he had failed, yet again. He'd tried, he had, to keep his pa's from having to see his horrid wings, yet here they were on full display before Dutch.

It was impossible to tell what species of wing he had, he could have been an over-sized crow or a particularly dull kite. There were great swatches that had gone completely bald, only irritated, pink skin left behind, only a few patches of feathers left between those and the bleeding wounds. Blood dripped and oozed onto the ground, vanishing the moment it touched the stone, some of his few remaining feathers breaking loose and doing the same.

They were barely recognizable as _wings_, besides. So crumpled and bent, like they'd been crushed in a fist and stomped on by a horse.

When… when had this _happened?_ Dutch remembered when Arthur was young, when his wings were handsome and gleaming, a shade of burnt caramel that had fit him perfectly. Only the scar from his mother to mar him. And now… now his soul was broken, was destroyed.

"_Oh, Dutch,"_

And, just for a moment, Dutch slipped, and Arthur could see his magpie's wings. Dull, too, dull, and ragged and bent and scarred, and he knew which wound was Hosea's because it was still wide and open and weeping, yet he must have been seeing things because, as he watched, the man's face blanched with pain, and both of his wings snapped at the joint, hanging limply as his had done when it was just Eliza and Isaac.

Eyes wide and glassy, wings dragging behind him and dripping blood that dissolved as soon as it hit the ground, Dutch staggered away.

Micah screamed yet, somehow, Arthur knew that, if he could see his wings, they would be unchanged, and stormed away. Even as his wings folded, crumpled inwards by an invisible hand that grabbed him and clenched tight, forcing his wings towards his torso, uncaring that they couldn't bend in such a way, he couldn't help but to laugh, beginning to drag himself to the edge of the cliff.

Arthur Morgan died, his wings still dripping blood and shedding feathers as they glowed gold and faded away.


End file.
